


LA Confidential

by Polly_Lynn



Series: Tumblr Methadone [4]
Category: Castle
Genre: Confessions, F/M, Fear, Fear of Flying, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Male-Female Friendship, Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-08
Updated: 2016-06-08
Packaged: 2018-07-13 20:51:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7136633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Polly_Lynn/pseuds/Polly_Lynn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"It's good." He tucks his fingers into his palm. He won't take the damned glass. Just has to be a jackass about it. "Not the cheap stuff you'd get back there."</p><p>He jerks his head toward the curtain she she’d passed through with grim determination twenty minutes before. Her anger flares. Her everything flares, and she very nearly douses him with the champagne. The plane drops, her insides rise, and she very nearly throws it in his smug, interfering face.</p>
            </blockquote>





	LA Confidential

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Insert for 3 x 23 To Love and Die in LA

 

 

"No."

She says it through her teeth. Without turning to him, this time, because the engines are roaring and the force of the plane's acceleration is merging the stiff length of her spine and the white-knuckled right angles of her arms with the softness of the oversized seat.

_First-class seat_

That's some low-voiced part of her currently jabbering psyche. _First-class._ It's something subdued, if not quite calm. Something slightly ashamed that she can hardly hear for the jangling cacophony of her mind as they judder and rise. As the landing gear folds up with the thump that always makes her heart go still, then race. She can hardly hear, but the sentiment insists.

_First-class_

"No, thank you," she adds or clarifies or apologizes. She turns toward him. Slightly. For a second. She thrusts the flute back at him. It's awkward. Emphatic just when she's trying to soften the refusal. "Thank you," she says again, and it's an all-of-a-sudden tug of war. The very opposite of softened, because he just can't let it go. He just _won't._

"It's good." He tucks his fingers into his palm. He won't take the damned glass. Just has to be a jackass about it. "Not the cheap stuff you'd get back there."

He jerks his head toward the curtain she’d passed through with grim determination twenty minutes before. Her anger flares. Her everything flares, and she very nearly douses him with the champagne. The plane drops, her insides rise, and she very nearly throws it in his smug, interfering face.

"I don't. Want. It."

There's something more than ice in her tone. Something so far beyond anger that she expects him to needle her. She expects him to push back, and it's almost a relief. She almost welcomes the excuse to be furious instead of  . . . something else. But he reverses course. There's a flash of realization. Contrition maybe, and he's a wholly different person. A man she's seen more and more of these last few months.

"I'm sorry." His voice is low. He takes the glass and signals the flight attendant and it's gone. "Sorry," he says again, looking at the glass still in his own hand. At the armrest and the screen that shows them hovering over New York, even though it feels like they’ve been shut into this awful metal tube for a million years already.

"Didn't you . . ." She gestures toward the crisp lines of the flight attendant making her way toward the galley. There's a bump and a rapid rise. A counterbalance and then the downward pressure of the plane leveling off. She quickly drops her hand. Wraps her fingers around the arm rest again. "You didn't want it?"

He shakes his head. "One's fine," he says shortly.

He catches another navy-suited figure on his way up the aisle and underscores the point by handing off his own glass, despite the generous inch still at the bottom. She hates him for it preemptively. For the smug, sullen, superior, _whatever_ point he's trying to make. She hates him, except he doesn't try to make it. He doesn't try anything that has anything to do with her, and she's left with a balled-up, nasty feeling.

He fishes around in the seat-back pocket and comes up with the _Skymall_ or the in-flight magazine or whatever it is up here where the other half lives. He spreads it awkwardly across his lap, and he's not even ignoring her. He's not giving her the cold shoulder or pouting or punishing her. He's . . . giving her space?

It's a ridiculous idea. Even up here, they each have more than their fair share in terms of length of leg, and she's never been so aware of the breadth of his shoulders. Necessity draws them close enough that the air is all warmth and sweat and his cologne, and yet he's as still and quiet and self-contained as he can be. He's contrite, if anything. He's giving her space, and the balled-up feeling is suffocating her.

"I can't have any," she blurts. She hadn't had the least intention of saying a thing. Has no intention of saying anything more, but it's like she's broken the seal on a bottle and the words come hissing out. "Champagne. Alcohol. I can't have any."

He frowns. His gaze turns inward and she can practically see him counting on his fingers. Every bad beer and good scotch they've shared. Every shot and surreptitious pour of contraband into coffee mugs and plastic cups when there's anything worth celebrating at the precinct. He remembers every one, and they're all at odds with her sudden declaration.

"You're afra . . ." He blinks at her, surprised she's spoken at all. Stunned by the revelation he's working out just now, but he bites back the first thing that rises to his tongue. He looks her over, and she's irrationally sure it matters. Irrationally sure she's watching his opinion of her going up in smoke, except it isn't.  His voice is level. Matter of fact and so carefully not too kind. "You take medication. To fly. I didn't know."

_Why would you?_ she wants to say. Because no one knows. Not her dad or Josh or Lanie or anyone other than the doctor when she has to grit the truth out every couple years. _Why would you know?_ she wants to wonder, except she remembers him in sunlight. She remembers him at her side with the shutters open. She remembers throwing her arms around him when the world didn't end and spilling secrets about tonsils and her mother and _Temptation Lane._ She remembers her very last muddled thought being that she had something important to tell him, if only the cold would grant her the mercy of one more breath.

"No one does." It's true enough and nothing at all like the truth. "No one," she says again.

He nods. A _secret's-safe-with-me_ gesture followed by silence. Followed by the measured stillness that feels newer than it really is, even though he _must_ want to ask. He always wants to ask.  Always wants to know when it comes to her.

"I wasn't always . . ."  

The background noise increases just then. A howl rising over the baseline roar of the engines. It cuts her off, even though it's probably normal. He's utterly unperturbed, so they're probably climbing or accelerating or shifting for some unremarkable reason, and here she is. Breathing hard through her nose and hardly keeping it together.

"What . . ." He stops himself in more ways than one. Hauls the end of whatever he was going to say back in. Curls his fingers into loose fists, as though he wants badly to cover her hand with his own, but he knows it’s the wrong thing. "You can't want to talk about this right now." He flashes her a rueful smile.

She doesn’t. She doesn’t want to talk about it _ever,_ but it’s tangled. It’s nasty and corrosive and pushing at her insides. Rearranging her in ways she hates. Royce. Her mother. Too-present fear knotted up with too-old anger and this new, driving fury.

"My mom." The plane shakes. _Nothing_ , she tells herself, with him as her bellwether. It’s nothing, but the admission comes through her teeth. Through her teeth, but it comes even so. "I didn't go back to Stanford."

"January."

It's one, faint word, but she knows instantly that he's thought about it. She knows he's long since mapped events on to events. Mapped all of it on to the unfolding of her life, and for once, it doesn't feel like any kind of violation. For once, it's liberating, and the words come.

"January," she says, eager to explain. To confess, because no one knows. Not anyone.  "It wasn't just . . . this." She squeezes her eyes closed tight and lets her spine climb to its full height. She lets her pulse race and her breath stutter. "It was everything. But I got to the end of the jetway . . . ”

She feels the bite of her nails in the meat of her palm. She forces each finger to unfurl, one by one, and remembers every sensation, stranded on the boundary between going and not going. The shock of frigid metal where her palm rested against the side of the plane. January air and the sickly fumes of the tarmac, sharp in her nose. The light and noise filling the cabin, far off and too close at once. Her eyes flick open.

“It was everything.” She pushes the words out. She muscles them past the achingly vivid memory and wants that to be an end. She wants it to be enough, but it’s not quite. “I ran. I just turned around and ran.”

“I can’t imagine,” he says after a long moment.

It’s true enough, and nothing like the truth, though. She hears him swallowing hard, like he’s trying. He’s _trying_ to imagine, and it leaves him as sick to his stomach as she is. Her head lolls toward him, heavy against the softness of the high seat back. He’s miserable for her. Pale, and the hand he swipes over his face is shaking.

It’s powerful. Her confession. His sympathy. Empathy really, because he _can_ imagine. He makes himself imagine, and it’s powerful. The world is quieter for it. _She’s_ quieter, inside and out. She meets him with a faint smile when he raises his eyes to hers.

“Does it help? The medication.” He’s not begging. He’s not looking for her to lie for his sake, but she’d like to anyway. She’d almost like to, but that’s not how this works between them. She shakes her head. He pulls in an unsteady breath and files it away. One more thing no one knows. No one but him. “Does anything?”

_No._ The syllable rises immediately to fill her mouth, but it’s not quite true. Not in the intimate confines of this moment. Warmth coming off his body and his hand very carefully not covering hers on the armrest between them.

“Nothing,” she says, stammering over it. Struggling with what’s always been and what could be. “Nothing so far.”

**Author's Note:**

> Flew to LAX recently. This popped into my head.


End file.
